SiOWfa16: Science in Our World: Certainty and Controversy

Growing up as a child, I don’t think I ever met someone that didn’t either like making cookies with their mom or simply eating the dough while she was making it. You try to sneak your hand into the bowl without your mom noticing, but ultimately I would get the slap on the hand with the spoon. My mom did her best to convince me that eating raw cookie dough was going to make me sick, and even one time like a week after eating it I got a small stomach ache and my mom tried to convince me that this was because of the dough. And she actually had me worried for a little to the point where I stopped eating it for a while, but that didn’t happen for long. This posed a bigger question of whether its proven that eating raw cookie dough can lead to sickness. The null hypothesis in this case would be consuming raw cookie dough doesn’t lead to sickness, while the alternative hypothesis is going to be consuming raw cookie dough does lead to sickness. I really was interested in seeing if there was a direct correlation between the two, and decided to do some research.

So the common thought is that the reason that people might be able to get sick from consuming raw cookie dough is just from the eggs, but little do people know that flour can be the cause of some types of diseases. When flour is uncooked, it contains bacteria that can be connected to diseases in humans. Research has been done that shows that there seems to be a trace of E. coli that seems to go undetected for most people. Pretty recently Betty Crocker had a recall on some of their products because test should that there were traces of E. coli. So imagine if the product wasn’t caught and a large amount got onto the market, millions of people could have been effect by this. But this isn’t the only company that seemed to run into a problem with their flour products, General Mills had to recall roughly 10 million pounds of flour that was sold under there company. According to an article published by the New York Times, the Food and Drug Administration released a statement saying 38 people located in 20 states have been affected by bacteria that is said to have E. coli in it (Stats Here). Roughly a fourth of them have had to be issued into the hospital into further treatment. This just goes to prove that even the smaller things that you don’t think necessarily will make you sick, still have a chance, increasing your chance of getting sick from uncooked food.

Other than flour that seems to now be causing a lot of concern, people still have to be on the lookout with the concerns of eating raw eggs, as it has a rich history of sometimes being contaminated with salmonella. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (Definition Here), Salmonella is known as a group of bacteria, and is said to be one of the most common reasons for food poisoning. But in addition there seems to be a lot of deadly effects of consuming products that contain salmonella, for example there are about 400 people that die each year because of it. Over the last 5 years, there have been multiple cases where there has been salmonella recorded in eggs, where people were getting sued and doing nationwide recalls on the eggs because they are too dangerous to consume. When your making homemade cookies at home, every time you go to take a bite of the raw dough you are increasing your chance of getting salmonella. Who knows maybe the companies did catch it initially so there could be one bad egg in your carton, which could ultimately have its negative effects.

Back in 2010, the New York Times (Story Found Here) released an article about research regarding the safety of eggs in different places throughout the state of Pennsylvania. Back in 1992 years ago when they did the initial test, results came back that about 26 percent of the hens had some type of contamination, but when they went back about 18 years later, the number dropped to a staggering 1 percent. They are clearly taking the measures of eliminating all the bad eggs that are being brought in, ultimately increasing the safety for the people that want to continue to eat raw cookie dough. But that doesn’t still make it completely safe though because not every s
ystem is safe and there could be a mishap where someone gets a bad egg.

Ultimately, as the years have passed on the F.D.A has done a lot more to protect the safety of the people in so many ways. The safety of eggs has always been a big issue that has been improved upon, but still doesn’t make it completely problem free. Not only eggs, but people also need to be educated about the dangers of flour and the potential bacteria that is associated with it. Eating raw cookie dough although is very enjoyable, can be a dangerous thing that has proven in the past to be actually deadly. With the research done and the information that has been gathered, I think it is safe to accept the alternative hypothesis, that there is a danger associated with consuming raw cookie dough.

http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm508450.htm